Samsung Galaxy S6 And Galaxy S6 Edge Unveiled With Premium Build Quality, Powerful Specs

This is one of those times when it feels great to finally see a product get announced, as it feels like we've been waiting forever for this one. Today, at Mobile World Congress, Samsung took the veil off of its much-anticipated Galaxy S6, and also the Galaxy S6 edge.

As has been heavily rumored, the S6 foregoes the plastic shell of its predecessor and integrates metal and glass instead, resulting in a far more premium feel, a thickness of 6.8mm, and a weight of 138g on the normal S6 and 132g on the edge. Samsung made it a point to mention that the metal it uses is 50% stronger than other smartphones - a bendgate jab, perhaps?

Both the S6 and S6 edge share the same hardware, which includes a 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display. That gives us a resolution of 2560x1440, and an insanely high pixel density of 577 ppi.

Samsung Galaxy S6

The new phones also include an octa-core processor (2.1GHz quad + 1.5GHz quad), 3GB of DDR4 memory, and LTE cat 6 (300/50Mbps) support. Also of note is the phone's rear 16 megapixel f/1.9 camera, which Samsung says will launch in less than a second (0.6 seconds, to be exact). The front camera is no slouch either, also boasting an aperture of f/1.9, and coming in at 5 megapixels.

For battery-life, Samsung says that we should be able to expect up to 11 hours of talktime over LTE, 13 hours of video, and 49 hours of music. It's not so much the battery-life itself that Samsung's touting here, though; instead, that's the fact that its battery charges up so quickly.

The company says that the phone can add 4 hours of battery-life after a mere 10 minutes of charging, and when compared to the iPhone, it charges up to full in half the time. Want to charge wirelessly? The S6 will have that option, as well.

High-end phones don't just mean "great performance"; they also mean "good looks". In that regard, it'll probably strike no one as a surprise that the edge version of the S6 will see the lion's share of attention at MWC. In lieu of a more traditional design, the edge model is curved on both the left and right side, something that Samsung said required temperatures of 800°C to pull off. This is a HOT phone, indeed.

In addition to the phone announcements, Samsung has also announced the Gear VR Innovator Edition for the S6, as well as Samsung Pay.

The new Gear VR, powered by Oculus, has a number of upgrades versus the last-gen model. These include a 15% reduction in size, which in turn makes it more comfortable to wear, higher performance, and power via USB. Samsung also stresses that its Gear VR content selection is extensive, and even includes a new performance from Cirque du Soleil, Kurios.

With Samsung Pay, the Korean-based company is dipping its hands into an area of the market that has quite a bit of unpredictability, but a lot of competition. Samsung says that its solution will be accepted by more merchants than any of its competitors, which is basically what any mobile pay service is going to have to boast in order to gain some serious traction.

The S6 and S6 edge will launch on April 10 in 20 countries. They'll be available in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB densities, and not surprisingly, will ship with Android 5.0 'Lollipop'.